For years I’ve watched as much TV coverage as possible of the various sports, but I’ve been thrilled that streaming online allows me to see much more of the events I watch.
The networks have traditionally only had a few hours each evening to cover many events, so you only got to see the highlights. That’s still true of much of the prime-time coverage. While watching the highlights can be great, but you can lose comprehension of just how outstanding most of the performances are without anything to compare them to.
Most people realize that getting to the Olympics is a peak experience for almost all the athletes participating. You don’t get there without training hard and long for much of your life. Reaching the top of your sport requires more than just enthusiasm and talent—although you won’t make it without those, success demands the kind of persistence, dedication, and sacrifice most of us can’t even imagine.
Those who get to the Olympics are the best of the best from around the world. Only a very few qualify to begin with, but even so a few of that select group will rise to the top of each sport or event.
Watching can be hard sometimes. Many of the things these athletes attempt are dangerous and have small margins for error. It can be heartbreaking to see someone who has spent practically every moment of their lives preparing for the few moments of their run, jump, race, or performance come up just short or fail spectacularly.
But then there are moments like what happened yesterday, when a 17-year-old slope-style snowboarder who’d had two miserable runs that put him in last place, put it all together on his third and last attempt, and ripped off a dazzlingly perfect run that won him a gold medal.
And because I’m an author, I have to bring that around to writing. But it’s not hard to see the parallels. In fact, they’re rather obvious. If you want to be at the top of the writing game, you’ve got to have talent, but then you’ve got work, work, work at it. That means keep writing…and writing…and writing some more.
So for me, its back to writing. And then I get to watch more Olympics.
Watching the Olympics makes us realize how dedicated some of our young athletes are. I love seeing them go beyond the norm and do what seems impossible, and, of course, I love it when our USA teams win. You are so right to compare writing to competing. Practice, practice and more practice.
ReplyDeleteGo Team USA!
So right, Karen, about the need to write, write and write to reach the top of our game.
ReplyDeleteI agree. In order to get better we've got to write and then write some more. It does give us a purpose, but it's also a lot of work. I never thought of it being analogous to being an athlete, but I think you're correct. There is a correlation.
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